Managing Monster Deposits

0:00 Okay, as folks start filtering in, I'll say good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're logging in from today. I know there's a quite large audience in here today, so really appreciate everybody's time. I see at least 9 time zones represented, so thanks for joining us from all over the world. I've got with me today for a pretty exciting discussion, Dan Wilton, CEO of 1st Mining Gold and Tara Christie, CEO of Banyan Gold, to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities that arise from developing enormous, there's a club entitled Monster, which is one of those projects. Dan And Tara, how are you both doing today? I'm doing great. Yeah, great, Romeo. Good to see you. Awesome. Now, a couple of housekeeping things before we get into the protein of today's event. I know it's a very packed house, and I know a lot of questions were submitted in advance of the event. I'm very likely won't get to every question today, as we only have an hour. That being said, I encourage you to still use the chat function at the bottom of the screen. I may have time to get to a few during today's hour, but if I don't, I'll still pass them through to the respective teams following today's event. So they'll be able to get back to you either with your email or with your phone number, depending on what you put in that registration.

1:04 I'll also say, today's event is being recorded and the replay will be available in the afternoon. Encourage you to share it as soon as it pops up in your inbox. It'll also be at the same link or on Six's YouTube page. But boring stuff out of the way, I wanna give you both an opportunity to introduce your companies because I know a big portion of the audience will not be familiar with 1 or both of you. Dan, I'll start with you. First Mining had what you called, I think it's true, a monumental day back in June. A lot of people tuning in today are hearing the story for the first time. So I'd love you to give us a two-minute version of who 1st Mining is and what you're building. Yeah, for sure. Thanks. And thanks everyone for joining us today. First Mining, developing 2 of the largest undeveloped Gold projects in Canada. And one of the most, well, the most recent gold project to get a federal environmental assessment approval, which is what Romeo was referring to before.

1:54 So our 2 projects, the first one, Springpole in northwestern Ontario, 5 and a bit million ounce gold,

2:05 30-ish million ounces of silver. Large open pit project that we, as I said before, have received the federal EA approval. We had a very, very important week for us here, having signed 2 long-term project agreements with 3 very important First Nations who we're working with moving forward. So another major, major milestone for the Spring Pool project, and driving towards the provincial environmental assessment, which we're expecting here shortly. And if that big project that can produce 300,000 ounces a year isn't enough, We have a larger project in Quebec on the topic of monsters, our DuParcay project in the Abitibi, which is in total about 6Moz located between The long and storied mining cities of Ruanaranda and Timins, smack in the middle of the Abitibi Gold Belt.

3:09 Every mining contractor and mining supplier pretty much in the world within a two-hour drive of the project. So just amazing infrastructure, access to

3:20 human capital more than anything in the Abitibi. Just such a great and rich tradition of mining in the area. And it's a fantastic high-grade combination, open pit and underground deposit that continues to grow. And we aspire to see that project. We think we have line of sight on 10Moz at DuParcay. So yes, those are the 2 monsters that keep us busy here. Appreciate it, Dan. Let's get to the other monster, not you Tara, but your project obviously. I'll throw it to you to give us a headline for what Banyan Gold is building. Sure. Banyan is focused on our ORMAC project where we have 8.6 million ounces, 3.9 million ounces of indicated and 5 million ounces of inferred.

4:05 It is also a open pit project mineralization starting from surface with existing infrastructure, highways, year round maintain roads across it, cell phone service, and hydroelectric power lines which cross our property already. So exceptional infrastructure. We also have our Greenfield Nitra property because right around Ormac, between those 2 we have over 530 square kilometers of which we've explored 2%. We just made 2 new discoveries with our boring fork in Seattle Creek discoveries, which are 25 kilometers from ORMAC and 5 kilometers from each other, really showing this is a big system. We are drilling 60,000 meters

4:50 on ORMAC this year, focusing on further defining some of those high-grade zones, converting areas that are currently classified as unmineralized potentially, and also following up on those high-grade zones. And of course, we drilled that stellar, you know, almost 14 meters of 14 grams

5:09 in this high-grade zone that we think projects up into the gap between the undrilled gap between our 2 deposits. So It's a really exciting year for us. We've got a key milestone coming up in the fourth quarter of our initial key VA, which we know the deposits are already continuing to grow. We think we've got a view on 10 million ounces, similar to Dan, with our drill program that's underway this year. We're year-round, we're not seasonal like many people think about in the Yukon because of that exceptional infrastructure and that's going to let us move this project forward very quickly. Awesome, appreciate it. As we've both said, you guys are both sitting on gold systems measured in millions, many millions of ounces. But the market, as we all know, I think everybody watching in the room today, pays juniors pennies on the dollar for ounces in the ground compared to what those same ounces are worth in a producer.

6:00 So just for folks in the room to get a better sense of that, Dan, I'll start with you here. Why do you think that gap exists and what's going to close it for 1st mining?

6:10 Listen, that gap exists because there's a lot of work you need to do from the point where you discover gold to the point where it's a bar. You're getting paid for it coming out of a refinery.

6:25 Those timelines are uncertain. They are long. Governments and others are working to try and compress those timelines. But the reality in the mining sector globally pretty much is from exploration discovery to production is I think on average 17 years now. And part of that is that from that initial discovery, even just the delineation of the resources like Tara's project and the ones that we have, that delineation takes a number of years, particularly for a big project. And it can be expensive alone, just as you're figuring out how much Gold you think you have. And then you have to figure out everything else about what turns a Gold deposit into a business. And that's your metallurgy. It's things like infrastructure that Tara is talking about.

7:24 Certainly, it's one of the big things we've been focusing on with Springpole.

7:30 But really, and I would say most importantly in Canada for these big projects, it's what are the relationships with the communities you're working around?

7:41 How do you build those relationships? How do you build that alignment with indigenous communities? And how does the project evolve through that? And that's one of the more, I think, one of the areas that all companies and projects should aspire to start as early as they can. So that to me is a big part. Now, I think systematically, our job is systematically de-risk. It's a word we all use. And that's figure out, you know, do the studies on your metallurgy, do the studies on what a mine plan would look like, what your infrastructure needs to look like, do economic studies to start giving people a sense of what the economics of the project are.

8:26 And then it's just going through the actual, both social licensing and kind of call it government licensing of the projects. So that and it's the uncertainty in that time frame, I think that in particularly in tougher markets were the reasons why our companies, you know, a couple of years ago traded at $10 an ounce or less. I think the market's waking up to that a little bit. And part of that is, there's a lot of margin between the $70 we're trading at today and $4,500 an ounce of your selling Gold. There's a lot to play with there. And people are starting to understand that. Once you start getting to the point where you can wrap some timeframes around this development and you start understanding what are the risks that need to be understood as you advance these projects, all the things you need for a PEA, then a PFS, then a feasibility study.

9:26 You just systematically tackle these risks. But I think the frustrating thing to us is that,

9:33 when you're on the front line and doing this work, you have a very good sense of where you're going to end up. And so part of the reason we usually, you know, even when these things were valued at $10, we had great confidence in the value of these assets is going to go up because you're doing all of this work right there.

9:51 But no one else believes you until you deliver the milestone. And that's kind of what we've seen in the last few months, particularly from the federal EA. There's always going to be an element that, particularly with developers, you know, the Lassonde curve is savage in its downturn and the long valley of death, but when you hit those milestones, you start seeing these rerating potentials. I appreciate that, Dan. Everybody's got a different name for that stretch of the Lausanne curve. I've heard it called the killing fields.

10:22 Tara, I'll throw it to you for what do you think is going to close that valuation gap for Banyan? Well, our strategy is really bolstered by the fact we've got a strong treasury and we can advance a lot of that de-risking that Dan is talking about. A big drill program this year focused on adding value for the economics. A key milestone coming up with the PEA, we'll finally have some economics. People talk about roads, we talk about the infrastructure we have, but until people see it, and until you actually see what the impact that has on the economics, I were discounted for it. Like even I had a site tour yesterday with a lot of investors. And there's this aha moment. Oh, yeah, this is really flat topography. You don't have any big rivers or lakes and yeah, that's a good road. We drove in a two-wheel drive bus from the airport and it took us 25 minutes to get to your site and there's a community. So

11:17 getting that across to the broader market and showing that you've done those steps and we'll be able to show, we think we'll be able to show a really strong PEA with very advanced metallurgical work, lots of work on where the power would come from, you know, what's it going to look like? You know, people want to know what the flow sheet is. And until we've done all those steps to be able to demonstrate that, we're going to be discounted because there's not a number that people can say, here's your NPV and your IRR. And so I think we're working hard. Our strategy is exactly to close that gap. And meanwhile, we're gonna do a service to our shareholders by making sure we hit some of those 11 other exploration targets on the property, because we don't know that ORMAC is the best on the property. This was a very large, long-lived system. We know the deposits open in depth, so we're drilling some deeper holes following up on some of that 15-gram material that we got at 350 meters depth in that one hole, following up in the gap between airstrip and powerline where we've got that high grade zone.

12:24 And then these other exploration targets we think will keep us on the upside of the exploration Lassonde curve while we shorten the other part of the Lausanne curve. Because this drill program and the work that we've done, we think we've saved a year on that timeline. And I ask my team all the time, how can we de-risk this, do it right and shorten that timeline?

12:45 And I think because of our infrastructure, we're in a brownfields beside 2 mines. I think my team will be able to continue to focus on that and achieve it. Exciting. One thing about monster deposits, and it's kind of, I guess, an uncomfortable truth, you could call it a champagne problem too, is with a bigger price, tends to come a bigger capex. And juniors obviously aren't in a position usually to write billion dollar checks. Tara, I'll start with you on this one. I'd love if you could walk us through a realistic menu of ways to deposit this monster size actually gets built. If there's any paths you can rule out entirely, if there's any intent towards, great to hear your insight. So we're moving towards our 1st PEA, and so we're exactly having that conversation now. Do you do the stage development like Artemis did?

13:35 Do you look at the bigger

13:37 development scenario? You know, what is the maximum scenario? Because we have had a few people ask us, you know, some of the very large scale projects, what would that look like? So yeah, we're weighing the capital intensity required versus the deposit size and kind of how do you optimize that? So there's a whole range of ways this project could be developed. We're in a really strong gold market with some majors that have an awful lot of cash. And so it's also a little bit of an odds. What are the odds that Banyan continues along as a single asset producer and builds this versus somebody coming along and acquiring it. And what are those tick marks that majors are looking for before they get really excited about acquiring and developing projects? So there's a whole lot of discussions around that going on right now. And we're looking forward to being able to present our PEA and talk about, you know, here's a way that it could be developed. And we know

14:37 it's a milestone. It's a waypoint along the way, this PEA, because we're drilling 60,000 meters of our best targeted program ever with the knowledge of kind of where the pits are in the PEA. So we know that our next study is probably going to be even stronger than this one. And people are saying, why don't you incorporate all your drilling into your PEA? And it's a It's a difficult question because you can delay putting off a PEA for quite a long time and then you don't have those numbers and that

15:07 footprint that you can start the other parts of the process, talking with communities about what it looks like, talking with the governments about what the revenue from tax dollars, etc. Can be. And when you have this big of a deposit, like just like Dan's project, the revenues to communities, to governments are really significant. So I think that is an important conversation to start having early. Awesome, Dan, I'll throw the exact same question to you. Yeah, I mean, similar to what Tara was saying,

15:44 there's a lot of different ways to tackle it And with the big projects, while built out at their NPV maximising scale, that might be more capital than a single project developer would be able to easily raise in the market. So we've thought about it in a few different ways. Number 1, exactly that.

16:10 Is there a way to start it smaller and expand? So you do some trade-off work on terms of what's the logical higher-grade of what's the logical higher-grade starter opportunity, and then how could that move? A lot of that work is really well done early in a project, so you can kind of lock down on a PFS and then a feasibility scope. For a whole variety of reasons, we've driven on a pre-feasibility study on the large project, because at some point you also need to kind of demonstrate the size of the prize. And the other thing that's scoping something smaller to start is a good strategy if you are maximizing

16:58 the financeability of the project. But when you have projects that are going to continue to grow as well, there is some real appetite for projects that can produce 250,300,350,400,000oz a year. That's what makes it actually really rare for a partner that might want to come in and join. So what are the ways to finance the CapEx? I mean, the conventional project financing sources in a Gold environment like this are there and available and expanding. To the extent that projects have any element of critical minerals, there's a lot of sort of export financing opportunities that can bring lower cost debt, structured debt, offtake financing, and things like that into the picture.

17:49 And then you have the whole world of streaming and royalty companies that are generating unbelievable amounts of cash flow every quarter and are in a business where if they're not deploying it and putting it into new projects, it just kind of piles up. And you just have to look at

18:11 what their quarterly cash flow in EBITDA of a Wheaton or a Franco or a Royal Gold is. They could build one of these mines off like a quarter of cash flow. But that part of the world is becoming really quite competitive, Particularly if you want to own exposure to a big project in Canada, which in our case, you want to own exposure to a big project in Canada that's already got its environmental assessment approvals. The further you move it along, the more rare

18:48 these projects really become. And people will continue to make discoveries and new projects will slide their way onto that list of the largest projects in the country. But they don't just slide into a permitting process, right? Like that's where it really does start, you know, the near-term proximity is what really starts I think getting some of those project finance providers much more focused. So we're kind of at that point right now. Get the EA approval so people know that the project was going forward. Get our community agreement so people know that the project is going forward. And feasibility study we're driving toward, you know, about this time next year.

19:36 But you start bringing those detailed project financing discussions along the way. And the other part is, as Tara said, is, you know, the scarcity of these projects is not unnoticed by the largest mining companies in the world. And they are really only becoming more scarce,

19:58 particularly in good jurisdictions. And everyone wants to own a mine in Canada. It's just the reality that if you're a big Gold mining company and you can own a mine anywhere, you probably want to own it in Canada, the US or Australia. If it's a producing mine, for sure. So yeah, I think that's the other angle. And whether that's as joint venture partners, whether that's as outright acquirers, I think we're going to continue to see that part of the world heat up as well. And just adding to that, Dan, you know, there are major mining companies that have those same major cash flow accumulation.

20:39 Many of them, when they build a project, there are things that they do that are unique. And I think they're going to be entering into the space of acquiring projects before they're permitted, maybe even before EA, because they want to put their own way that they would want that project built in before it goes into permitting. And you save time if you get into a project before they get into the environmental assessment and permitting process because we all know in Canada changing a project in the middle of permitting costs you more time than just getting a project that stays still through permitting. So I think we're going to see a change in when corporates and when

21:18 companies get involved in juniors. And again, because they're so rare, they're going to miss opportunities as projects get acquired, as they get either built or financed, the opportunities for entry are going to get advantaged. I think people are starting to figure that out, that they better maybe start thinking about acting sooner, rather than that traditional wait until the final permit and then buy the fully de-risked project. I think we're going to see a change

21:44 in this environment. I appreciate that insight. One thing I want to talk about because you guys have projects in Canada with deposits of this scale, it also means footprints of that scale. And that means to me, community and First Nation relationship isn't some kind of box to check. It's really the critical path for how these projects get done. And Tara, I'll start with you here. What have you learned about doing that work properly in Canada, and where would you say the industry sometimes still gets it wrong here?

22:14 Well, I think industry sometimes gets it wrong if they don't listen, if they're talking more than they're listening and taking that feedback and incorporating it into their plans right from the early phases. And it's something that we've been doing very regularly. All of our baseline environmental programs that we're doing and have been doing since 2021, have involved working directly with the First Nation, going to them with what the plan is, involving them in it, bringing them results, designing the next phase. And it goes round. We're very involved in the community. I've been running a charity for 14 years in the Yukon, long before I was the CEO, working with schools and First Nations

22:53 all across the Yukon and in particularly in the communities where we have projects and specifically in Mayo. We are very focused on community meetings. We had one last month, we had 1 2 days ago, we're getting good turnout. All the teachers and even the principal showed up at the one a couple days ago. We have another one tomorrow in Whitehorse. Our charities has a fundraiser where we've invited lots of people. So it's super important that you go to these meetings and you listen, you take that feedback and you show how you've incorporated it. And so that was one of the posters that we had, what we heard from you and what we're doing about it, how we're incorporating that into our plans. And then of course, working with the First Nation, coming to an agreement when they want an agreement, because First Nations have different processes where they want to have agreements signed, at what stage do they wanna do that? And they've got a lot of other priorities. So, you know, my timeline might not be theirs, and I need to recognize that and respect it and make sure that my people are available and I'm available at the right time. So we are really focused on making sure that we're hiring local, training local, using First Nation and community-owned businesses.

24:05 A Huge number of our staff are UConners. I think we've got like 50%, 30% are from the local community. And that really helps you build that long term credibility. And you can't do it overnight. You don't just put your permit application in and go, what do you guys think? We're doing that work well in advance. And we've learned from some of the companies that have done a great job all across Canada, and you take that and then you do even better. And we hope that that's where Banyan's going. Awesome, appreciate it Tara. Dan, I think it's a good time to ask you this question based on news this week. So I'll let you talk about your experience working with communities locally. Yeah, I mean, I've learned so much over the last 7.5 years of working with communities. Tara made a really good point, which is that, you know, often a project proponents timelines and availability and capacity is very, very different than the timelines and availability and capacity of communities to engage.

25:07 And that can be difficult at times to live with, But the reality is, and I've had the benefit and opportunity to sit and learn from elders and listen to leadership and interact with over multiple years with the people who are just trying to serve their nations day to day and kind of keeping things going forward. Leadership in First Nations today always, always have something more urgent than dealing with your project, right? And that's just a practical reality. And so you need to make sure that you are available when the communities are in a position to have the discussions.

26:01 So for us, it's been a real road of us, as Tara says, listening and understanding and learning and contributing and trying to make sure the communities have that capacity to be able to engage. The communities came to us, I think in 2022, and said, well, we want to do our own impact assessment on the Spring Pool project. It really needs to be led through an Anishinaabe lens with our culture specific to our values and our laws and you know to their surprise we were actually pretty excited about that. And, you know, I still remember the meeting after they proposed it and we said yes, they kind of came up and said, well, we really didn't think you were going to say yes to that. Like it kind of surprised a bit.

26:59 But you know, we undertook in Ontario what has been one of the most, we didn't undertake it, the communities undertook it, we supported it, one of the most extensive indigenous-led assessments of a project ever done, like of any kind of project. Years of active engagement with different groups inside the communities, elders, youth, women, land users, really understanding what the impacts were going to be so that when you could have the discussion about the project and what the benefits are. Everyone has really done the work to understand it. So it just, it really is taking that investment that we collectively need to make. And we collectively as industry, we collectively as governments.

27:52 We all talk about how we want to speed up permitting timelines and advance projects more quickly, But the only way that can happen is if we find a way to provide more capacity to communities to participate in projects earlier, and if project proponents have the commitments to build those relationships early. And I think that's, you know, it's really the only way that this is going to work. So yeah, there's there. I'm saying there are no shortcuts like there are no shortcuts. It's just you can't you can't mandate a timeframe to build a relationship, right? Like those things sometimes just take time and you have to meet the communities where they are in their own journey and be supportive of that journey along the way.

28:47 Awesome, I appreciate you both weighing in. It's a part of mining I find super interesting, so I appreciate your insights. There's one thing that's kind of not exclusive to monster deposits, but I think particularly affects them. And that's that developing something this size is like more than a decade plus commitment, obviously. And that's longer than most CEOs, most bull markets, and frankly, most shareholders stick around for. And Tara, I'll throw this one to you first. How do you keep a team, a treasury and a register aligned over the kind of timeline necessary to bring something like Wormack to life? Well, the registry, bringing in shareholders that understand that timeline was the first step. I've got some exceptionally solid long-term shareholders that really understand the mining business as my cornerstone. And that's about 40% of my shareholders, you know, Alpiana, they understand building mines, they build mines and understand the timelines.

29:45 Steve Land from Franklin, gold and precious metals. You know, they understand that my new large shareholder at 7%, the high net worth individuals in my register are all very veteran miners. So understand that it's gonna be time and what the work is. And they generally continue to support the company in financings and they know that that's part of it. They want to be able to maintain their positions through that. So building that is the first part of it. And then building the team, like some of the people that I've brought on, like Kai Woloshin, he's permanent projects, many projects in the Yukon, he wants to be part of building this project. So he knows what that timeline is, what all those complex things that we need to do to get into those next phases are.

30:34 And that's part of the changing. Like we had an early exploration. I had people that wanted to be part of early exploration, part of succession planning. And as you grow up and your market cap gets larger, you get to this pre-development phase, you make sure you're hiring and bringing on the right people for that phase of the project. And that's something that we are very, very cognizant of and working hard on. And it's going to be part of our success by bringing in the right people for the right phase of the project. It's just like when you build a mine, you bring in mine builders. They're not the same as your early exploration people. Even now, a lot of the early exploration people say, oh, Bain is too big, and I just like the generative stuff. We still have some generative stuff going on, which is exciting, but production drilling to get to measure indicated reserve, that's a very, it's a very, has to be done very systematically, it's very repetitive, And some people, they don't enjoy that. So just throughout the whole company, you need to think of that from what we're doing in permitting, from what we're doing in our studies. We need to bring on the right people for the right time.

31:43 I appreciate that. Dan, throw the same question to you. How do you personally in 1st mining deal with the timeline necessary to bring something like SpringPool or DuPriquet online? I think I've been at it 7.5 plus years at this point. I was brought on by Keith Neumeier, who has been at it since 1st mining, well, since before 1st mining acquired the projects. So Keith's in this 10 plus years. And like Tara said, we are absolutely blessed with a shareholder group that has been there and supported us in the very difficult times when it was really difficult to raise a little bit of money just to keep moving the projects forward.

32:33 And a lot of those shareholders, it's important to make sure that you are looking after those shareholders, that they're getting the information they want, that you have that relationship and that you're honest with them about when stuff's going well and when it's not. That's I think what keeps some of those long-tenured shareholders there. But we're also in a position now, which is super exciting. It's not just external shareholders, but even you look on the team, we've been able to hold a core group of a team together here for 4 or 5 years since we brought on most of our key VPs in that time. And we had a couple of years of very long walks through very dry deserts. Like when the share price was at $0.11, $0.12, it was tough to keep money in the company. We took most of our non-salary compensation in shares or options or RSUs just because A, we believed in it and B, a dollar we didn't pay out in bonuses was a dollar we didn't have to go raise somewhere else.

33:46 But as a result, we have really all the way through our company and some of our longer tenured employees have just been participating in the share price rise, which is really common in the last 12 months, but it can make a really, really big difference to people's lives, which is awesome to see. So we're at a point now where a lot of those dedicated long-tenured shareholders, And for us, the Lausanne curve was pretty savage. First Mining bought this project and the share price was whatever, $0.60, $0.70, $0.80. I joined, it was $0.20. Went up a little bit, went down to $0.10. And we're talking over years.

34:34 Last time it was above $0.60 was like 2016. Like it's been a 10-year journey. And so, you know, we're really fortunate to have a lot of those investors and a lot of them who were there for Keith Neumayer and backing Keith and backing the successes that Keith has had. And Keith has been able to keep a lot of people and then help bring a lot of new shareholders in. But The fundamentals of the story have also now allowed us to start seeing a lot of the larger sort of dedicated mining funds starting to look. Ours was a situation where There was a high degree of skepticism as to whether the project was ever going to go forward.

35:22 Deposit sits in the Bay of a Lake. You're never going to get the EA. You're never going to get approval with the communities. And so we knew we had to do that work as part of ultimately achieving this re-rating. And it happened at a time when Gold price went from $1,300 an ounce to $4,600 an ounce, or wherever it is today. So, Luckily, that's not luckily, we always had a good sense that that was the direction it was going. But fortunately, that has aligned with kind of the development timelines that you now have these projects kind of ready to go at a time when you have that real scarcity in the industry, and you have a very supportive Gold price that will ultimately give you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you can see a project finance to advance from here. But no, it has been, you know, I'm sure Tara is getting the same thing.

36:21 You get lots of congratulations when your share price goes up. You scratch your head a little bit and you haven't really done anything different over the last 5 years. Just all of a sudden, you know, the yardstick is finally showing up. And I'd rather have it than not. But, you know, we all, we all in this industry aspire to be an overnight success, like 10 years in the making. So. I'm 10 years too. So success, Although we made our discovery in 2019, so that's only 6.5 years. But yeah, he's had a few hard years of finding the discovery part first, right? He's had a few hard years. We had to find the 5 million ounce asset. So, you know, you put that it's like now 20 years from when that discovery oil was drilled at Springpole pretty much. So, yeah, it's like we were so lean in the beginning. You know, I wore a whole bunch of hats and now I actually have to those jobs have now become jobs and you need to hire people for those jobs, which is a great position to be in. And, and I will say people are coming to us who want to work and be part of this project, which is, I love it. You know, people, some of the great people, I'm flattered, like Patrick Lenguas, he came join our team.

37:32 You know, He came for an interview the day his deal was closing. That's like, really, you don't want to go be partying? No, I want to talk to you. I'm so excited about what you're doing here. And same with people in the Yukon, wanting to join our team, being part of this. It will be a greatest success to see this 1 day become a mine, whoever builds it, whether I'm still part of that team when we get there, it's nice to finally be at that threshold and know that you've got all the pieces coming together that are going to make that happen, hopefully. Yeah. The timelines are so long, but it must be gratifying to get there. Yeah, and for the first time, Tara, It's at a point where, and we haven't been in this point since probably 2011 in this industry, where you can have access to enough capital that's not going to dilute you so much that it doesn't make sense for your projects to move forward.

38:35 So you can go raise $50M, $100M, which is like real money to do real work, but the existing shareholders aren't diluted right out the door to do it, as opposed to the years when we were scrapping it out with, you know, 50 and 100 million market caps, like to go raise $10 million on a 50 million market cap like that really hurts for your existing investors if they're not participating in it. But now, when the market caps start getting up into the levels where they are, you can raise enough money sensibly to do the real work that needs to happen. So for us, one of the main reasons we're here and not 5 years behind on timeframes is that we had this portfolio of assets, great projects, but we had 2 5Moz projects in the portfolio. We were going to focus there. So we found other people and partners who were excited about the projects that we had and would move them forward. So that's like that's Pickle Crow.

39:39 That's Goldlawn, Goliath. That's our Cameron project now. Hope Brook, like all of these projects we were able to turn through creativity and finding partners into like $90 million of cash over the last 5 years. And that $90 million of cash put largely into our environment and community relations budget, moving projects through EA and advancing towards agreements with communities. If we hadn't had that cash to be able to do the work, you know, we still would have been scrapping it out, trying to raise $5 million to keep the lights on and do a little bit. Like the reality of this industry is you need a certain, to spend a certain amount on these projects, particularly big projects, like just to understand them well enough to take them to the next stage. So we're luckily at the point now where the access to capital is there and at valuations that are still, you know, we're not jumping up and down that we're, you know, valued at 50 or 70 bucks an ounce, like it's better than 7, but it's still a long way from the 500 where, you know, most companies.

41:00 Even 100 and 150 is kind of where I think we should both be. We've got quite a bit of work. And we can follow in your model because we have a huge accessory land package of a bunch of other projects. We just acquired another 450 square kilometers of Yukon-based projects. Plus we have our Highland project, which has an existing resource on it, permitted project. So we've got optionality for the first, yeah, the markets are there. We've got a strong treasury now, but we are thinking ahead what else, what's gonna come next? Yes, there could be a spin out if something happens, but we can also bend those projects or option them and get cash like you did. So it's nice to finally have that optionality and not feel like you've only got the 0.5 to go to market alternative. So I watched that, Dan.

41:51 Well, thanks. No, it's a very important part of it. Right. It just, you know, people in the downturn, people forget that like you can't really do a lot on these projects with 5 or 10 million bucks a year. If you're really advancing a big project, there is a certain scale that you need to deploy capital to be able to move it to the next milestone. Awesome. One question is from the chat, but I had it as one of mine too. Bob Barker asked, are you guys planning to sell or build these mines, basically? And I think it's one of the questions that I had. So I think a lot of people on this call know deposits like both of yours tend to end up in bigger hands eventually.

42:36 Tara, I'll start with you. Do you build a monster deposit like this to mine it or to sell it? And probably more importantly, is that a choice that you really get to make? It's not really a choice you get to make. And in this market, I think that's going to be the case. We're building the team that wants to build it and we're doing all of the de-risking to advance it towards that. And that's a selling feature. And it's also, it also sets Banyan up. And as I talked about before, we're going to continue to change out the management team to get the right people doing the right jobs for the face of the company. So if that's the right alternative for Banyan to build it and the environment's right to finance it as a single asset company, we'll be advancing towards that. However, I think the odds of that with the amount of cash flow and the scale of this deposit are probably much lower than the being acquired.

43:34 But you can't sit around and wait to be bought out. You need to be, as Dan talked about, de-risking it, moving it forward. That adds so much value to shorten those timelines, to do the work, and you need to do a lot of that baseline work as you're talking to the community and all of these things can't be done in isolation. They all are a pretty complex job to make sure that you're doing it all lockstep so that you're really maximizing and saving time, saving money, but moving it forward meaningfully. So we'll see. I think it's a really exciting time with these gold prices and it still shocks me how the general public hasn't quite caught on to this huge, huge change in gold price and projects like ours are sitting at such low valuations.

44:25 People think we've, you know, our share price is up so much, but I kind of look at it and go, wow, you know, compared to some of our peers, even in the same jurisdiction, our 2 companies still have a long way to re-rate. And I think both Dan and I have pretty clear strategies on how we're going to close that valuation gap. That's certainly an exciting time for both companies. But Dan, I'll throw you the same question. Do you really get a choice on whether you build this or sell this? And what are potential plans for 1st mining? Yeah. I mean, I think you, as Tara said it very well, you can't just sit around and wait for someone to come and knock on the door. You have to be advancing these projects to the best of your ability to continue to move them forward. And at some point, I think every project should at least be in a position to give its shareholders the alternative of, do we see higher value in building this project and getting it into production? What would it be valued like as a producer?

45:34 Or on a risk-adjusted basis, are we better either bringing in a partner or having someone who wants to pay our shareholders for all of the de-risking work that's been done and get it as close to that fair value where our shareholders don't have to take the risk of the construction and putting it into production. Because the reality is, If you look at the last 15 years of project builds in Canada, some of the greatest minds in the country, in fact, most of the greatest minds in the country, when they were being built were called disasters that nearly bankrupted the companies that were building them. Right?

46:20 Like Detour in 2018 was a disaster. Canadian Malardic, like, you know, Osisko was like weeks from going bankrupt when they built Malardic because they turned the mill on and it didn't work. They had to bring in Gold Corp as a 20 percent shareholder. You know, Rainy River was challenging forever. Mine, it's going to spit out whatever, 500 million dollars of free cash flow this year. But for years, that was really tough. You know, like Magino, Valentine, like all of these projects, even to the point where they were in mid construction, a lot of them looked like they were going to, you know, going to be challenges. Now you got to get through the other side. And you also, I think, can model yourself after some of the ones that have done exceptionally well. I put Artemis in that category.

47:14 Stephen Dean and the team have done an exceptional job of limiting the scope of what they were building, having it manageable, and then driving it into production. And now demonstrating that these monster deposits don't have to be built at monster scale right away to capture the value of the monster deposit. So, I think all you can do is be as prepared as you can be. You need to have those dialogues with the industry. You want as many people following your project as you can. And there come a couple of logical times in which they're going to want to get involved. And 1, as Tara said earlier, like some people will want to be involved right from the beginning in the exploration stage because, you know, they want to be part of how they think they're going to make it bigger. They may want to be involved in PEA and pre-permitting so they can help scope the project that they want to see. That's great. Now, Having them involved as shareholders is one thing.

48:18 Bringing in a project JV partner too early may or may not make sense, depending on the value and the capital that gets committed. I think it's when you get to kind of the point that, you know, with our EA approvals we're looking at kind of 18, call it 18 months to a construction decision and still some important work to get done before we get to that point. But we're going to have a pretty decent sense of the project, what's there and how it could happen. I think you just need to make sure that the shareholders or the board is doing the work to make sure that the shareholders have all of the best and highest value opportunities there presented at the time when you're making the decisions to either, you know, take on the work and the risk and the opportunity of building it, or bring it on a partner, or ultimately having someone who would want to, you know, take it from you to put it into their own processes to do that build. So you do have a say in it.

49:27 But I think if you try and really steer it at a point where we're not going to talk to the industry at all, I don't think you're going to do your shareholder's a service. I appreciate that. Now we've got about 10 minutes left and we covered a lot of the ground that I wanted to get to in project specific questions. So if you don't mind, there's hundreds of people in the room. I'm going to try and get to a couple of questions for each of you specific to your projects. Obviously, guys, I'm not going to get to all the questions that are in the chat. There aren't too many, but I will pass them through to the teams afterwards. But I will get to a couple. Dan, one person asked, just to remind the crowd, For every $100, the Gold price increases. What does that mean for the NPV of SpringPool and DuParquet? Every $100 in the Gold price is about $230M of after-tax NPV combined for SpringPool and DuParquet.

50:20 So that is one of the things that these big projects give you, is the leverage to the Gold price. That actual fundamental value leverage to small moves in the Gold price. And I think for us, we have a couple of slides in our corporate presentation that try and lay this out, but nowhere for us is that more clear than a DuParquet. So we put out our PEA at DuParquet in 2023, which isn't that, I mean, 3 years, not that long ago, but it was at a base case of $1,800 Gold. And at $1,800 Gold on a, just over 500Million US upfront capital, the project a just over US$500M upfront capital. The project had a US$600M Canadian NPV and an 18% IRR. People are like, well, that looks kind of skinny.

51:15 At a US$2,200 Gold price. So this is still now US$2,500 from the spot price. Less than half of the spot price, that NPV went up to $1.1 billion and the IRR to 28%. So add another $2,500 on the Gold price. And it's basically a $100M US after tax NPV for every $100 in the Gold price. So let's say you're adding another $2.5 billion US, which today is $3 billion and a bit on to that. So the straight line math would say this is a $4 billion-ish NPV project in which we still get almost 0 value in our share price for DuParquet.

52:08 But that leverage is what these big projects give you. So I will be very excited when Tara publishes her PEA and you get to actually look at, you know, what is that leverage in a massive project like Banyan? It's very exciting, right? Because you're going to have like every $100 will be, think of it as a percentage of your market cap, right? Like 100 dollars in the Gold. And a year ago, when our market caps were 100, it was like double our market cap for every hundred dollars in the Gold price. Right. So, but that's that fundamentally for everyone on this call, Like the reason that you invest in large Gold projects is that they have this leverage and they're scarce.

52:57 But those 2 things to me are the biggest reasons that if you're thinking anywhere where you can invest across the spectrum, like the reason I want to own a big gold project, particularly in Canada, is that it's scarce and it's going to have massive leverage to the gold price. Well and what top gold price do you use in your sensitivity? Remember like a year ago, if you to put $3,000 or $4,000 on the top end of your sensitivity table, people would have criticized you like, oh, yeah, aggressive. So what do you put for the bottom? And what do you put for the top? I think that's a real interesting if you like Pierre Lassonde had a crazy prediction most recently for Gold price, maybe it's not crazy, a very high, which if any of us were to put that in our sensitivity table, we'd be laughed at. But I think that that leverage, as we see these massive changes in Gold price, is on these big projects.

53:53 Thank you for doing the numbers, Dan. Having your numbers at Springpole, that's pretty exceptional. Yeah. When we put out the DuParc PEA in 2023, our QPs wouldn't let us, it was $1,800 gold price and they wouldn't let us go above $2,200. They're like, oh, that's, you know, because you got to go that far down. As far up as you're going, you've got to go that far down. And today, like if someone said, OK, I can show $3,000 to $6,000 based on a $4,500 gold price, like you might put that sensitivity in. But The reality, you know, I think we're sitting in a world right now with a lot of uncertainty. And it talked to the people that I know who are the smartest people who talk about Gold price, you know, particularly our friends, Ronnie Stiflet at Incrementum.

54:46 And like Ronnie's kind of got the base case, I think of 8,000 at the end of the decade. And his last end of the decade call, we got there in the middle of the decade. So, we could be there next year and he's then the exact same fundamentals are going to be showing that's going in a different direction. So I just I'll share a little anecdote. I remember in the in COVID times, you know, gold had a little bit of a bump. But I remember we were talking with 1 shareholder, I think the gold price would have been like $1,500 an ounce. And he said, well, Dan, you know, you've got these studies on these projects. What's this company worth when gold hits $5,000 an ounce? And of course, we make bold proclamations like, if $5,000 an ounce, like this industry is going to be amazing. Everyone's going to be owning Gold and I'm going to be retired. I'm going to need to worry about that. Well, here we are having these discussions with Gold at $5,000 an ounce, but there's nothing that says it's not going to be $20,000 an ounce at the end of the decade. So again, that's just, I wouldn't bank my whole portfolio on the fact that it needs to get there. But when you're looking at what your investments are in terms of holding of gold equities, like have something that has the leverage that is really gonna pay off when it gets there. Awesome. Tara, I got one. This is coming up in the chat frequently, so

56:16 I'll throw it to you. A lot of people want to know a bit more about the possibility of a spin-off, and so if you could speak to that, whatever you're able to say now, I appreciate it. It seems to be coming up in the chat quite a bit. Well, right now we're very focused on our drill program and maximizing value of ORMAC, but we're evaluating that. We acquired these projects because we like them. We think they have lots of exploration potential. And that's been a very successful strategy to spin out for other companies. It adds lots of value for shareholders, for them to get it, because we know we're not getting any value for those projects right now. But again, there's no rush, and you want to have a good management team if you're going to do a spin out. The other option for us is to package up or sell some of those assets to bring in non-dilutive cash. So just like Dan did. So we're evaluating those strategies.

57:08 We're not under any pressure because really low holding costs. We don't have to do any assessment work. I think the earliest we have to do any on any of our new projects is 3 years. So we can add value by getting permits on some of them, which will give us optionality. Some of them have permits on them already, which means you can do exploration on them. So we're evaluating what best to do with that. It was a great deal to acquire them. We've always had our Highland project, which in this gold market with an existing resource and a permit, and even a drill on the property is a very valuable thing. So stay tuned. I'm not gonna announce what I'm gonna do now because we're still evaluating what the best opportunity is for our shareholders. I appreciate it very much. Everybody, thank you so much for joining for this conversation. I know there's a lot of content that we didn't get to. It's always going to be the case. So we had a great conversation. I'm going to pass through the comments to relevant teams. I really appreciate you spending time with me and some of my favourite giant projects in Canada. Tara and Dan, thank you so much for sharing your insights and for sharing the Banyan 1st Mining stories.

58:10 No, it's great. Thanks, Romeo. Thanks, Tara. Great to see you. Good luck with the tournament this weekend. Thank you very much. This afternoon, actually. All right. Thank you, guys. And I love talking about monster deposits and great to talk to you, Romeo. Thanks for the great questions. Awesome. Have a great weekend, everyone. Cheers. Thanks all. Yeah.